Although completed a decade ago, Tony Judt’s history of postwar Europe presaged some of the challenges that it faces today. Shortly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, one of our greatest contemporary historians Tony Judt resolved to write a book to sort his thinking out. It took fifteen years, but the resulting Postwar:…
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Big data can be used for good and it can be used for evil. Some recent public research illustrates the former but there are doubts about some private uses. It is not generally realised that Statistics New Zealand has a large research database – the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) – containing microdata about people and households from…
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Economists and policy analysts have paid insufficient attention to the distributional consequences of change. Hence the rise of the angries. In order to get to this column’s conclusion I am going to recall a little of my scholarly journey. When I came back from England in 1970, I looked around for a research area. Distributional…
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Far too much public commentary on wealth inequality obscures what is actually is going on. This column is a grump about the poor quality of public discourse. It is illustrated by the recent outburst over the distribution of wealth in New Zealand and some rather inept public responses to the recent re-publication of some data,…
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What can we learn about health care systems and the US from the muddle that America is getting into over Obamacare? Donald Trump is not particularly interested in policy. When he promised to replace Obamacare – the current US health system – with something which would be better, he was responding to the conflicting demands…
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International comparisons suggest that New Zealand secondary students are not doing well. It may even be that recent policy measures have worsened their performance. The 2015 results for the triennial OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) evaluation were reported just before Christmas so they did not get much coverage. We need to think about…
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How does a post-truth world work? Some psychological findings may be useful. (The Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘post-truth’ is ‘Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’ The Dictionary labelled it the word of the year 2016.) This columnist is…
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A recent decision by New Zealand on Air in response to the changing media technologies raises a range of issues about how the platforms are used. The announcement by New Zealand on Air that it was changing its mode of funding is a reminder of the current turmoil in the media from the convergence of…
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A book about two psychologists who have altered the way we think about the way we think. For many people, Michael Lewis is best known for his 2010 book The Big Short and the follow-up film, which describes the carryings-on of the financial sector in the American housing market which underlay the Global Financial Crisis. In fact…
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Your In-tray is piled high. Dear Bill, I recall when you first entered Parliament 26 years ago, it was widely thought you were prime-ministerial material. You’ve made it. Congratulations. National was going through the extremist phase of Ruthanasia and Jennicide at the time. You were marked as someone who came from the great National progressive…
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Could the alienated grumpies have a greater effect on New Zealand political life? This was written before John Key announced his resignation. Other than perhaps the tense I think there is no need for revision. Unfortunately most analysis on the American elections focuses on who voted but, as Bob Chapman pointed out, the Non-Vote Party…
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A new book leads to ponderings on our technology strategy. Technology is an ambiguous notion. Its most common use in economics arises in the following way. The laws of thermodynamics mean that there exist production functions which relate inputs to outputs. The most familiar ones have a single output generated by inputs of labour and…
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Can Trump wreck the world trading system? New Zealand is such a small country that it is very easy to be internationally bullied. Much of our diplomatic effort aims to minimise such bullying, but fear of it lurks behind concerns about what a Trump administration might do, not only to us but the rest of…
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The times are a’changing, as recent macroeconomic fashions are being abandoned and old verities are being restated. Alan Blinder, an American economist, described as ‘one of the great economic minds of his generation,’ was an economic adviser to President Clinton and was a Vice Chair of the American Federal Reserve (central bank). He is known…
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The alienated Angries who supported Brexit and Trump are not going to go away. If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. Arch-imperialist Rudyard Kipling’s bitter couplet, written shortly after the death of his son at Loos in September 1915, is an alternative view…
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While overall income inequality may have been relatively stable over the last two decades, it appears to be increasing in Auckland (and perhaps in our other big urban centres). This column honours Bob Chapman (1922-2004), professor of Political Studies at the University of Auckland, remembered for his mentoring of many students including Helen Clark. He…
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A novel about an historical event reminds us of the health redisorganisation of the 1990s, raising issues remaining relevant to today. I puzzle at how politicians and advisers can make giant mistakes but are never held accountable. The notion of accountability became fashionable in the neoliberal changes of the 1980s and many people further down…
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Pretending it can, or that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand can function independently from the rest of the world, could generate a financial crash. The very joining of monetary policy and fiscal policy into a single phrase is a criticism of the neoliberal macroeconomics. The reconfiguration under Rogernomics assumed that the two could be…
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What does the latest Economics Prize in honour of Alfred Nobel tell us about economics as a science? Alfred Nobel did not endow a prize in economics. In 1968 the Swedish National (i.e. central) Bank founded a ‘Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel’. The award’s announcement is coordinated with the annual Nobel…
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Paper to the Fabian Society, 12 October, 2016 While we continue to chew over the carcass of the Fourth Labour Government – the Lange-Douglas one – we pay little attention to the subsequent Fifth Labour Government. Yet the Clark-Cullen one is greatly shaping the current Labour Opposition and the current National Government. It will,…
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